Nelson wasn’t at the Café on Whyte or the Arts Barn. Annie and Mark leaned across the small round table at the café and toasted one another with lemon iced teas and petits fours.
The server flitted from table to table. A bee droned nearby. Mark swatted at a wasp. From the nearby Gateway Boulevard, a truck backfired. The heavy sun bore down on them as dust and smoke mingled in the air. Annie coughed.
“The wildfires herald climate change for sure,” she said. “Hot and dry summers, long warm winters.”
“Not another ice age?” asked Mark. “They talked about that in the seventies, my aunt told me. She said the experts don’t know their toes from their periwinkles. Midler claims it’s cyclical.”
“I think Adebayo caused it with his hot air and his cigars,” Annie said. “He’s a blowhard and he blew
